In this article

Quickstart: Create a Spark cluster in HDInsight using template

05/07/2018

5 minutes to read

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In this article

Learn how to create an Apache Spark cluster in Azure HDInsight, and how to run Spark SQL queries against Hive tables. Apache Spark enables fast data analytics and cluster computing using in-memory processing. For information on Spark on HDInsight, see Overview: Apache Spark on Azure HDInsight.

In this quickstart, you use a Resource Manager template to create an HDInsight Spark cluster. The cluster uses Azure Storage Blobs as the cluster storage. For more information on using Data Lake Storage Gen2, see Quickstart: Set up clusters in HDInsight.

Important

Billing for HDInsight clusters is prorated per minute, whether you are using them or not. Be sure to delete your cluster after you have finished using it. For more information, see the Clean up resources section of this article.

Select your Azure subscription used for creating this cluster. The subscription used for this quickstart is <Azure subscription name>.

Resource group

Create a resource group or select an existing one. Resource group is used to manage Azure resources for your projects. The new resource group name used for this quickstart is myspark20180403rg.

Location

Select a location for the resource group. The template uses this location for creating the cluster as well as for the default cluster storage. The location used for this quickstart is East US 2.

ClusterName

Enter a name for the HDInsight cluster that you want to create. The new cluster name used for this quickstart is myspark20180403.

Cluster login name and password

The default login name is admin. Choose a password for the cluster login. The login name used for this quickstart is admin.

SSH user name and password

Choose a password for the SSH user. The SSH user name used for this quickstart is sshuser.

Select I agree to the terms and conditions stated above, select Pin to dashboard, and then select Purchase. You can see a new tile titled Deploying Template deployment. It takes about 20 minutes to create the cluster. The cluster must be created before you can proceed to the next session.

If you run into an issue with creating HDInsight clusters, it could be that you do not have the right permissions to do so. For more information, see Access control requirements.

Install VSCode for PySpark/hive applications

Learn how to use the Azure HDInsight Tools for Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to create and submit Hive batch jobs, interactive Hive queries, PySpark batch, and PySpark interactive scripts. The Azure HDInsight Tools can be installed on the platforms that are supported by VSCode. These include Windows, Linux, and macOS. For more information, see Use VSCode to author/submit PySpark application.

Create a Jupyter notebook

Jupyter Notebook is an interactive notebook environment that supports various programming languages. The notebook allows you to interact with your data, combine code with markdown text and perform simple visualizations.

From the portal, select Cluster dashboards, and then select Jupyter Notebook. If prompted, enter the cluster login credentials for the cluster.

Select New > PySpark to create a notebook.

A new notebook is created and opened with the name Untitled(Untitled.pynb).

Run Spark SQL statements

SQL (Structured Query Language) is the most common and widely used language for querying and defining data. Spark SQL functions as an extension to Apache Spark for processing structured data, using the familiar SQL syntax.

Verify the kernel is ready. The kernel is ready when you see a hollow circle next to the kernel name in the notebook. Solid circle denotes that the kernel is busy.

When you start the notebook for the first time, the kernel performs some tasks in the background. Wait for the kernel to be ready.

Paste the following code in an empty cell, and then press SHIFT + ENTER to run the code. The command lists the Hive tables on the cluster:

%%sql
SHOW TABLES

When you use a Jupyter Notebook with your HDInsight Spark cluster, you get a preset sqlContext that you can use to run Hive queries using Spark SQL. %%sql tells Jupyter Notebook to use the preset sqlContext to run the Hive query. The query retrieves the top 10 rows from a Hive table (hivesampletable) that comes with all HDInsight clusters by default. It takes about 30 seconds to get the results. The output looks like:

Every time you run a query in Jupyter, your web browser window title shows a (Busy) status along with the notebook title. You also see a solid circle next to the PySpark text in the top-right corner.

Run another query to see the data in hivesampletable.

%%sql
SELECT * FROM hivesampletable LIMIT 10

The screen shall refresh to show the query output.

From the File menu on the notebook, select Close and Halt. Shutting down the notebook releases the cluster resources.

Clean up resources

HDInsight saves your data in Azure Storage or Azure Data Lake Store, so you can safely delete a cluster when it is not in use. You are also charged for an HDInsight cluster, even when it is not in use. Since the charges for the cluster are many times more than the charges for storage, it makes economic sense to delete clusters when they are not in use. If you plan to work on the tutorial listed in Next steps immediately, you might want to keep the cluster.

Switch back to the Azure portal, and select Delete.

You can also select the resource group name to open the resource group page, and then select Delete resource group. By deleting the resource group, you delete both the HDInsight Spark cluster, and the default storage account.

Next steps

In this quickstart, you learned how to create an HDInsight Spark cluster and run a basic Spark SQL query. Advance to the next tutorial to learn how to use an HDInsight Spark cluster to run interactive queries on sample data.